Oblivious to his cluttered surroundings, the unkempt figure of an alchemist is like that of the poet who sits among a chaotic jumble of words, emotions and experiences, carefully weighing each one for perfect balance in the attempt to bring forth gold.
Poetry is the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is the ash.
—Leonard Cohen
Poetry, then, has roots in the moment when a voice makes us alert to the presence of another or others. It has affinities with all the ways a solitary voice, actual or virtual, imitates the presence of others. Yet as a form of art it is deeply embedded in the single human voice, in the solitary state that hears the other and sometimes recreates that other. Poetry is a vocal imagining, ultimately social but essentially individual and inward.
—Robert Pinsky Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
—Allen Ginsberg
Photo Credit: Andrew Farley, The Alchemist, England, UK.